Simone Veil

Simone Veil

Simone Annie Liline Jacob

Simone Veil, born Simone Annie Liline Jacob, was born to an educated Jewish family in southern France in 1927.  In 1944 her family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau then Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.  Only she and her sister survived to be liberated in 1945 by British soldiers.

Here is a British radio broadcast of the Bergen-Belsen liberation.  Here is a link to a tribute film to the liberation.

After her liberation from Bergen-Belsen, Simone met and married her husband, Antoine Veil.  She was educated as a scientist and lawyer and became Minister of Health for the Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Jacques Chirac, both of whom met Pope John Paul II.

Giscard d'Estaing and Pope John Paul II

President Jacques Chirac and Pope John Paul II in Lourdes, France in 2004

The accomplishments of Simone Veil

I just couldn't stomach posting pictures of
aborted fetuses.  They are out there and horrific
like the pictures of the concentration camps.  

Simone Veil did many wonderful things during her lifetime.  She had a family and fostered loving relationships with them, she was President of the European Parliament, she was president of Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, and she worked tirelessly for women's rights.  What she is most known for is her fight to legalize birth control pills and abortion in France.  Was that an accomplishment?  

Birth rates across Western Europe are very low.  Abortion is rampant, not as much in Europe as in the United States, but even so, the numbers of those killed via abortion since 1974 dwarf those killed in the Shoah by a factor of 10.  Women have become more objectified and families have been weakened.  I doubt that Simone Veil would support such a culture of death if she realized that was her legacy.  I hope that, in her golden years, she has a change of heart.